James Fraser was Bishop of Manchester in the 1880s and like other prominent local men (always men) of that time is commemorated with this statue in Albert Square. Apparently he was pictured looking away from the Town Hall (behind) because he disliked it so much. Right now he can look at the Chinese lanterns that are dangling from the nearby trees in preparation for Chinese New Year in a couple of weeks. No festival celebrated too early.
Sometimes one must just acknowledge that all the pictures taken on a given day were a bit crap one way or another. This at least epitomises the fact that most of Manchester city centre is currently a building site. Don’t get used to seeing it though — the rest of the week I’m at home, marking. Things will liven up again soon I hope.
The Watchtower is the magazine with the largest print run in the whole world, some 53,000.000 copies each month, apparently. All distributed for free. (Though it seems even the servants of God’s kingdom on Earth are not immune from having to adapt to the Internet, with the magazine having gone down to 16 pages and more emphasis placed on the digital edition these days.) I guess you need a large and voluntary distribution network to handle a publication like that. And so without addressing irrelevant questions of ‘faith’ — that’s what the Witnesses are: unpaid labour. They have to put in timesheets like the rest of us, but instead of getting pay now, they believe their redemption will come when the world finally ends (which according to them has been about to take place since 1914).
None of this persuades a great many people to stop and take a copy.
Really quiet in Manchester city centre today. Perhaps this is early January malaise, perhaps because it was chucking it down with rain — though that doesn’t come across on this particular photo. Anyway, glad to get to the weekend.
Manchester Victoria station passes by through the windows of a Metrolink tram. Why was I on a Metrolink tram going through Victoria, the place where I normally catch my train home? Because there weren’t any bloody trains from Victoria this afternoon, were there. Tram to Rochdale instead, three-hour journey home, welcome back to the 2015 commute indeed.
Manchester’s last opportunity to get onto the blog this year, a chance it takes with relative aplomb. The Palace used to be an office building for an insurance company. The interior has featured on the blog at one point in the past.
I pictured the inside of this building a few weeks ago. It reopened earlier this year after a long refurbishment — one which fortunately began before the present government began its conscious process of eviscerating anything which smacks of a public service.
Composition dilemma — better to get the front door centered between the pillars, or the pillar’s shadow? I went for the shadow…
Another glorious morning. The week has been a lot less stressful than I predicted it would be back on Monday.
Being 42 